


Not Just Any White Shirt

by EntreNous



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Ending Relationship, F/M, Season/Series 01, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-09
Updated: 2005-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-27 05:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They both notice details, he and Bones."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Just Any White Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a request for a missing scene related to what we saw of Booth coming to the door to meet Temperance while his girlfriend Tessa, wearing his shirt, stood behind him.

Seely is in the middle of folding shirts and dropping them into his pile of clothes to take to the dry-cleaners when Tessa pauses in the doorway. 

“Oh,” she says. “I guess I forgot to bring something to wear to bed.”

“Right,” he says. He’s tired after the wrap-up of the terrorism case. The heavy dinner they just ate isn’t helping, so he’s not especially up for much more than conking out as soon as his head hits the pillow. So he doesn’t grin like he usually would and tell her she looks best in nothing at all. Instead he yanks open his t-shirt drawer and digs around. He hands her something with the F.B.I. logo on it, the kind of thing he’d usually wear to the gym or put on to dig up weeds outside the house.

“Thanks,” she says faintly when he holds out the cotton tee. She turns away from him to take off her casual clothes, draping them over the chair beside the bed before she slides the t-shirt over her head. He doesn’t glance up when she tugs it down self-consciously, just finishes the task of gathering together his dress shirts. Tuesday mornings are always when he drops by the dry-cleaners. 

She wanders out of the room to brush her teeth. She’ll probably put up her hair into a kind of knot at the top of her head, the way she usually does when they aren’t going to have sex before they fall asleep. 

He hears the water running, and the sound of Tessa blowing her nose, then silence. 

Funny that she didn’t just bring a bag of stuff like she usually does. But when he automatically reaches to tuck his t-shirts back in place, he reflects that they might have just been on the verge of having a talk. A Drawer Talk. Tessa is over here enough, a couple of nights a week lately. It’d make sense for her to have her own part of a shelf in the medicine cabinet, a spot on his closet floor to toss a pair or two of her strappy high-heels, and her own drawer in the bureau. 

He shuts the drawer that’s filled to the brim with t-shirts, and realizes there’s still one oxford shirt flung on the chair where Tessa just laid her clothes. It’s the one she was wearing when she walked into the room just after Bones came to the door. Funny how she’d decided to slide that on to come and check out who had rung the bell. He’s got a robe, after all, and she’d had her own clothes there that night.

He picks it up, automatically smoothing out a crease. It looks like a regular white shirt, though Seely knows it’s one of the three he bought about a month ago because of their quality material and fine stitching. He’d worn this one to the Jeffersonian Institute just last week, the day he’d been waiting around with Temperance for a verdict from Jack on some or other squishy bag of evidence. When she’d handed him a folder of paperwork in the midst of their conversation, her fingertips had touched and then lingered on the cuff. Though she said nothing, her gaze was drawn to the detail of the threads, and the edges of her lips quirked up into an almost-smile. Well, until Jack approached them with a raised eyebrow and the findings they’d been waiting on. 

Of course he expects Temperance Brennan to see something like that. They both notice details, he and Bones. 

Seemed like Tessa had pulled it on like any old thing, though. 

“So I was thinking, maybe tomorrow,” Tessa starts to say as she pads bare-foot back into the room. 

“I’m beat,” he says quickly. “Tomorrow I’ve got a stack of reports to finish.”

She nods slowly. “Then the weekend, maybe, we could get together, or . . .” She trails off, standing in front of him with her face scrubbed clean of make-up and her hair fastened in a tumble on top of her head with an elastic. 

“Sure, the weekend,” he says. He folds the shirt in his hands, running his fingertips over the threads at the cuffs. Then he puts it at the bottom of the pile. It’s not just any white shirt to someone who knows how to spot particulars, so it’s not like he’s going to wear it to work again anytime soon.


End file.
